What lessons can be learnt from the Chernobyl disaster?

The Chernobyl disaster has been caused by mainly the incompetence of the workers and officers on duty in the plant on April 26, 1986.

The failure to notice that the control rod inserted into the reactor has reacted inversely and instead of decreasing the power it has increases the power of the plant and caused the explosion. The explosion happened as the officers are unable to notice the mistake and thus, no action was taken. Officers are also inexperienced with large power plants like that of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. An inexperienced officer when tasked with heavy responsibility will definitely create problems as they do not know what to do in times of danger and also how to respond or check for mistakes. As of the inexperience, the officers are unable to see the counter-intuitive nor do anything about it, sparking the explosion of the plant.

From this explosion, we have learnt that even though an officer may be highly educated, without the neccessary experience, the officer should not be entrusted with this huge task. Furthermore, an experienced officer should be present to guide them along the way over a period of time to ensure that they are more used to operating huge power plants. also, the company should also hire a much more highly skilled personnel to operate as compared those hired to manage the plant such as one which worked only with conventional plants and another whom only worked with small plants before. Such inexperience causes them to be unable to control and manage big plants properly and thus, we learn that proper guidance needs to be ensured as with experience and qualification, as the management committee are not even qualified.

The second problem that leads to the downfall of Chernobyl is because of the partial containment, built in a bid to cut costs, instead of the full containment built for regular plants. This causes 100 and more different types of radioatcive substances to escape into the air and atmosphere which leads to the widespread of radioactivity, causing the whole place to be unsuitable for human, and leading to high death rates and high cancer rates. This tells us that safety is much more important a matter as compared to the cost and capital.

From this, we can thus learn that even if we were to save cost by hiring inexperienced and unqualified staff and also building un-safe plants, the biggest loss will be when the problems arises from the infrastructure, where the cost saved will not even be enough to cover up for the disaster.

Thus, in conclusion, one should not cut costs on the neccessary and instead, spend on the safety of the plant, in prevention of another such accident.

by: lianghao [pls help update]